I am a fiber artist and woodworker working in Orange County, California and interested in the relationship between knowledge and the material world. I’m captivated by what we might call the material life of knowledge: 1) the knowledge embedded in and conveyed by the material world, and 2) the material world that enables and mediates human knowledge and power. After I earned my PhD in philosophy in 2018, I switched gears to approach these questions through more material means: artistic practice and the embrace of craft and craftsmanship.
The themes currently animating my work are the relationship between nostalgia and alienation, and how we treat the end of a life (for material goods as well as people). I find working intimately with the material world (which craftsmanship requires) to be an antidote to the alienation I feel from a hectic modern world. Making beautiful, useful objects out of waste materials, and designing them so they can safely return to the earth at the end of their life is another way to connect to the larger web of relations of which we’re a part.
Melanie Gayle Bowman
